


Bethany's Trial

by KHE1138



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:14:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27319816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KHE1138/pseuds/KHE1138
Summary: Bethany Hawke finds her self alone and blind after a cave-in. She must use her abilities to find her way out and survive.
Kudos: 2





	Bethany's Trial

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The sound reverberated through Bethany’s skull, each drop causing a throb of pain. When she opened her eyes she was greeted with nothing but darkness. A moment of fear and panic assaulted her, driving her to sit up and forcing more pain into her head.

“Stop Bethany. You’re a Grey Warden now, you fight the blight. A little darkness is nothing to worry about. Slow down and think.”

She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. The sound of air moving in and out of her lungs helping to calm her nerves while the process also slowed her heartbeat. Even the pounding in her head backed down to a dull ache. 

A set of images flashed through her mind, “Right, the tunnel. One of the supports splintered and the ceiling collapsed.”

Bethany slowly took stock of her situation. Sitting on the ground she ran her hands across her body and down her legs. Nothing felt broken, and she felt no pain beyond the headache that was already beginning to recede. 

Unable to see in the darkness she slowly stood. Having lost her staff somewhere in the darkness she focused mana into her hands, unleashing a fireball. The flames roared through the air before crashing against the wall she was facing. The explosion of the fireball temporarily deafened her. More than the impact of her spell the thing that startled her most was that the darkness remained. 

Panic and fear began to well up inside her again as she fell to her knees. The fireball should have lit up the entire tunnel, but she hadn’t seen anything. Tears flowed down her cheeks, the realization that she was actually blind hitting her hard.

Though she couldn’t see, her partially diminished hearing had returned to full. The soft crackling of the scattered flames was the most prominent sound. It was punctuated by the staccato cracks and pops of the superheated rock wall, now cooling in the tunnel air. Beneath those sounds Bethany could still hear the barely distinct dripping of water, but a new sound tried to drown it out. She grew slightly concerned when her mind registered the high pitched tittering coming from something with her in the tunnel.

Bethany thought briefly about her brother still in Kirkwall. She remembered the last time she was with him. She thought she would die then, but he made the choice to save her. Suddenly she was flooded with new resolve. She wiped her tears on the backs of her leather gloves and stood, clenching her fists.

“I may not be able to see, but I will not die in the dark.”

Now that she had regained her composure she could feel the creature coming near her. She “fell” into herself the way her cousin taught her, feeling the taint in her own blood and its reaction to the taint in the world around her. The creature coming down the tunnel was small, corrupted but not a darkspawn. The chittering and clicking sounds it continued to make helped her determine it was a spider. The taint within it was weak, she couldn’t determine its exact location, but she could tell its general direction and distance.

With this realization her confidence was bolstered. Even if she couldn’t see she could still locate her enemy and fight. Unable to pinpoint the spider’s exact position made some of the spells in her arsenal useless in this fight, but she had one spell that should easily do the trick. 

With the spider still coming towards her she began to move to her left, careful not to cross her ankles so she wouldn’t accidentally trip herself. At the same time she began focusing mana into her hands again, preparing her next spell.

When she felt the blighted creature enter her range she let the mana pooling in her hands loose with a gesture towards the roof of the tunnel. The spell announced itself with a boom echoing up and down the tunnel. The fires raining down from the ceiling roared, each one impacting on the ground, adding to the cacophony as the rock floor cooked under the spider. The spider’s screech pierced the surrounding noise, signaling the end of combat. 

Barely audible over the ringing in her ears Bethany could hear the results of her spell’s devastation. The stone floor groaned, protesting the flash heating then slow cooling it had been forced to endure. The magic fueled flames had their own things to say, growing quieter as their otherworldly fuel died out. The spider body’s sizzled at her accusingly. 

Even as the noise of her spell died out Bethany wasn’t sure she could trust her ears to alert her to danger yet. She reached into the corruption flowing through her veins again. She could feel the cooked spider near her, the taint giving off a slightly different feeling than when the spider was alive. She stretched her awareness further down the tunnel. She could feel darkspawn now, a group, no more than four of them. They didn’t have the massive presence an ogre gave off, so probably genlocks or hurlocks, she couldn’t tell which though. Past them was another entity. Not a darkspawn, the corruption was advanced, but not a ghoul either. 

“A Warden, it has to be. I need to get to them.”

With a clear objective Bethany began her slow journey down the tunnel. She moved to the side and used the rock wall to guide her. Along the way she began to strategize for the fight she knew she would have against the group of darkspawn that stood between her and her goal.

Unable to measure the passage of time, Bethany could only guess at how long she had been travelling. At some point the grunts and growls of the darkspawn were loud enough to hear. She had never bothered to listen to darkspawn before, but now she began to wonder if they were actually communicating. While they were all similar she could clearly make out four distinct “voices”. The “language” seemed to all be grunts and growls and moans. There was an odd huffing sound that Bethany could only describe as darkspawn laughter. Do darkspawn tell jokes?

When Bethany could feel them without having to stretch herself she stopped. She waited, preparing for the inevitable battle. She forced magic into her fingertips, preparing for her opening move. The darkspawn chatter stopped, they had felt her too. The heavy footsteps told her they had started running. She flexed her fingers straight and then curled them into a fist, releasing the spell. She felt the darkspawn slow and then stop as they fought against her spell. They were no match for her pull of the abyss. The darkspawn’s strength failed and she sensed the tainted creatures get pulled back towards the center of her spell. She forced more mana into her fingertips and gestured to the ceiling again, releasing another firestorm directly over the center of her previous spell.

When it was over the sounds she had previously heard as a result of her spell were joined by the creaking of the darkspawn leathers and the pinging of the cooling metal from their weapons. The darkspawn themselves had the same lifeless feeling she had first felt from the spider. She stretched out one more time into her tainted blood. She felt the Warden closer now, and nothing between them.

“Time to get out of here.”

Still unable to pass the time Bethany moved down the tunnel lost in her own thoughts. It wasn’t until she heard the scrapping of a boot on the ground that she realized she could feel the Warden nearby.

She called out, her voice echoing back at her, “Excuse me, I am Warden Bethany Hawke. I was caught in a cave-in some way back. I find myself blinded and in need of assistance.”

The voice that came back to her was smooth and friendly, “Yes, I’ve been waiting on you. I am Senior Warden Nathaniel Howe. We’ve not met, but I can see your reputation as both a mage and a Warden are well deserved.”

Bethany was slightly puzzled, “You were expecting me?”

Howe chuckled, “Yes, the Warden-Commander wanted to be here herself. Unfortunately an unexpected issue arose. I am to lead you out of the tunnel and she will meet us as soon as the issue is resolved.”

With her hand on his shoulder Bethany let Nathaniel lead her to the exit. “So Solona knew I was here?”

“She did.”

“And did she know I was blind?”

Bethany felt her guide’s shoulder tense. She didn’t need to see to know he had suddenly become uncomfortable. “I…she did.”

The woman suddenly had some idea of what was going on. “And did I pass?”

The shoulder under her hand relaxed, “I believe you did, though it isn’t my place to decide.”

After several more minutes walking in silence Bethany could hear the wind blowing through the trees and birds chirping above her. Nathaniel’s voice called over the sounds of nature.

“Warden-Commander, I’m surprised to see you here before us.”

“The matter was simple enough to resolve. Had it not been so important I would have left it for someone else to handle.”

Bethany stopped waling when Nathaniel did, but she had no way to know that her cousin was reaching a finger to her face. The soft fingertip started at the center of her forehead and dragged down to the bridge of her nose. When Solona Amell pulled her finger away Bethany’s sight returned.

“What? How? How did you do that?” Bethany had never seen or heard of such magic.

A slight smile broke across Solona’s face, “There are schools of magic that are paths to abilities some would consider, unnatural. I took your sight and staged the cave-in to test you. A test you passed.”

“What exactly was the test for?”

Solona’s smile was quickly replaced with a frown. “There is something coming. I don’t know what it is, or when it will get here. I do know that if it isn’t stopped it will make the blight look like a summer heat wave. I’m putting together a squad of Wardens. They will be responsible for investigating this threat, tracking it down, and eliminating it. This squad will need to be made up of the elite. I don’t know what situations they’ll be put into. They will need to be able to handle themselves no matter what. This test was to determine if you would be suitable.”

Bethany nodded, “I see. Who will be on the team with me?”

Solona’s smile returned, “For now it is just Nathaniel, Oghren, and you.” 

Bethany couldn’t mask her surprise, “Oghren?”

“Oghren was with me during the Blight. He fought the archdemon by my side before he was even a Warden. He became a Warden to help against the Mother and the Architect. That dwarf can do more falling down drunk than most people can do sober.”

Bethany nodded again, “When you put it that way he would be an asset to any team.”

Solona motioned back towards the path, away from the tunnel entrance. “Let’s head back. You won’t get transferred into this new unit until I get the paperwork done. Right now Nathaniel has an assignment he needs to prepare for and you have a messenger from Kirkwall waiting for you.”

As the three began walking back Bethany wondered what could possibly be going on that her brother would send a messenger instead of a letter. Before she could consider it further another thought popped into her head. “Solona, do darkspawn tell each other jokes?”


End file.
